


The Blade

by akelios



Series: Shadow and Blade [2]
Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Kinkmeme, Knifeplay, M/M, Possessiveness, Scarring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-10-24 15:17:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/264955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akelios/pseuds/akelios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I needed to mark him. To take every mark others had left on him and change them; write my name on him with every touch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blade

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I borrowed Agent Phil Coulson from the Iron Man movies, Thor and the Avengers. But it's not really a crossover. I just adore him unreasonably.

Sergeant Murphy did not quite dare to draw her gun, though it was clear that she wanted to. I had the advantage of numbers however and she was no fool.

“Marcone. Hand Harry over right now.” I had never seen anyone actually speak through their teeth before, their jaw completely unmoving. Sergeant Murphy made it look both eerie and natural. Perhaps she'd had a lot of practice.

My arms tightened around Harry, barely keeping him from sliding to the ground. I was strong, but Harry was large and ungainly. If this wasn't resolved quickly we would both wind up on the pavement.

“Sergeant. Please be reasonable here. How do you intend to get him back to his apartment? Tie him to the back of your motorcycle? I am not going to abduct or harm Dresden. He is injured and unconscious.” I gave her a reason she might believe from me. “Dresden was injured, in part, on my behalf. By the laws of the Accords I owe him a debt for his actions. All I wish to do is get him to safety and to satisfy my obligation.

“Tell me where to take him, and I will do so.”

There was only one place she would have me take him. His apartment which she had access to and I, so far as she knew, did not. I shifted my weight to feel the amulet slide over my skin. What the sergeant did not know about us could fill volumes. Sirens grew closer, making her decision for her. We had to leave and she could not take Harry from the scene on her own.

“His apartment. I'll follow you and if I even think you're pulling anything scumbag...” Sergeant Murphy didn't finish her threat, just turned on her heel and jumped onto her Harley, waiting.

“Mr. Hendricks.” He was at my side before I finished saying his name. Freed from having to keep his guard on Sergeant Murphy he took the bulk of Harry's weight from me and we carried him to the waiting car. We maneuvered Harry into the back seat, I climbed in with him and then we were gone, the engine surging to life beneath us and settling into a steady rumbling growl.

I knew the Sergeant was following us closely. I could see her single head light in the rear view mirror. A few patrol cars passed us, taking no notice and I settled into the seat, Harry's shoulders in my lap. He had curled up around me on the back seat, his legs too long for even this car to let him stretch out. I ran my hands over his body, checking the wounds.

Bruises, some cuts and scrapes. A long gash that would probably need stitches along the back of his rib cage. My fingers touched that wound lightly, drawn to it but not wanting to cause Harry pain from it. It was wrong, seeing the marks that someone else placed on him. I wanted to erase them. Cover them with my marks.

He made a sound, a small sigh of pain and I stilled, one hand beneath the tatters of his shirt at the small of his back. There were no bruises there that I could see. It might be the only unmarred part of him at the moment. I rubbed my thumb in small circles, soothing. Harry stilled after a few seconds and the car was filled with silence once more.

There were so many bruises, so many cuts. None of them mine. It was wrong. Frustrating. I should be the only one to touch Harry, let alone leave a mark on him.

One of my knives appeared in my hand without a thought, the blade flicking open nearly silently. It shone against his skin, bright and cheerful. A surge of need hit me and I pressed the edge of the blade against his pale skin, scraped the sweat away with it. It maked a soft, wet sound. I shivered, the edge trembling against his skin but not cutting. I would never cut him accidentally, without a thought. I cared for him too much to hurt him carelessly.

The tip of my knife dimpled his skin. I could start there. Just a small mark, nothing that would be noticed or identifiable by anyone but me. Not yet anyway. With all the other wounds, one more would go unremarked.

A little more pressure-

“No.” I looked up, my attention drawn away from Harry. We were at a stop light and Mr. Hendricks had turned to stare at me in the mirror. I met his eyes for a second and then looked away. One problem with knowing someone for so long is that they know you too well in the end. I could see myself in his eyes and it was not a flattering picture at the moment. “You do that, we're going to have a problem John.”

He knew me so well.

Without taking my eyes from his I lifted the knife and closed it. It was a lead weight in my pocket, unfulfilled promise and desire that pulled at me as I put it away and settled Harry more comfortably across my lap.

~

Harry lay stretched out on his tiny bed, head turned to one side so that he could look at me through the shaggy fall of his hair. I ran my palm over the taut curve of his back, my fingers playing in the valley of his spine. He sighed, a fraction of the tension going out of him with that breath. Harry's hands relaxed a bit from their strangle hold on the slats of the headboard.

I moved behind him and urged his legs further apart, dropping down far enough that I could lap at his balls. Harry moaned and lost his grip on the headboard, one hand reaching under his own body for me. He loved it when I played with his balls, but it was almost too much feeling for him. He was too sensitive there and it tipped over quite easily into something like pain if I wasn't careful. I rolled my tongue around them one last time and swatted at Harry's hand.

“Keep your hands up.”

“This is- hells bells John.” Harry grumbled, but his hand returned to the headboard. I had wanted to tie him there, but Harry had balked at the idea harder than I'd ever seen before. He refused to discuss why, though it wasn't hard to guess at the general shape of the problem.

I touched the backs of his thighs, relishing the feeling of the muscles beneath his skin trembling and flexing under my hands. He was stretched from earlier, to the point where he was open and waiting to be filled again. I took him again, easy as breathing and he pushed back, taking me in faster than I had intended.

We moved together with the ease of long familiarity, though it was unusually slow and gentle for us. The bruises along his back screamed at me. I wanted to wipe them out, erase them. Only time would do that. I had to be content with leaving small marks of my own. The shape of my fingers in the hollows of his hips, the imprint of my teeth in the spare flesh of his chest or his thigh where no one could see it.

Harry made soft sounds and I thought he would have his eyes closed at this point, blocking out the world to focus on the way it felt to have me inside of him. The weight of my body partially covering him, not pinning him down but holding him against me. Wanting him.

I took one hand off of his hips and flipped back the fold of sheet closest to the wall. The knife I'd hidden there looked like an offering, something sacred; meant to be used only for this one purpose. The contrast of the black handle and the silver shine of the blade against the bright white cloth of the sheets was visually overwhelming. I dug my hands into his flesh and thrust harder, drawing a high whine from Harry as my angle changed. He clamped down on me, fought to meet me.

My eyes kept going back to the knife. I wasn't going to use it. I wasn't. It was a compromise. If Harry wouldn't let me tie him up, he certainly wouldn't let me do _that_. So I would never use it. But I wanted to. Compromise. It would be enough. It had to be.

I came with one hand on Harry and the other wrapped around the hilt of the knife. It would be enough.

~

“Wh're d'ng?” 'What are you doing?' I translated easily from Harry's muffled sleep speech into English. My finger continued to move down Harry's back, tracing the letters of my name one by one over the pale skin down the length of his spine. To be safe I was writing it in Russian, just in case he woke enough to figure out that the movements weren't meaningless wanderings.

“Saying my prayers.” I added a small flourish to the last letter, taking my finger across the last few knobs of his spine and over the rise of his ass.

Harry subsided with another mutter, dropping back into a deeper sleep.

Maybe a permanent marker? I could write small and if I did it quickly enough while he was asleep he would never know. The possibility that Sergeant Murphy would see it in the middle of having to help the mortician Butters the next time Harry was wounded was rather high though, and that explanation would be difficult. And most likely quite incendiary toward the end.

Worse than that was the knowledge that it would wash off after some time. It would be maddening to have him bear my name and watch it dissolve from his skin. Better that I should have to live with things the way they were now than to be so close to what I wanted and have to see it come undone.

The need to mark him was at its quietest, calm for the moment. Harry bore only the marks I'd left on him and I was as content as I could ever be.

~

It was an ugly wound and I remained certain that the scar it would leave behind once it healed would be twisted and brutish. The work of a creature bent on death and destruction. A permanent mark that I could not erase. Could never change into something else by my touch.

That knowledge burned inside of me.

Harry was on his couch, the fire turning the small room close to the point of claustrophobia with the heat. Harry had stripped down to nothing, even the bandages were gone so that the stitched and healing wound could get some air. My own clothing choked me, too tight, too heavy. I lived with it and went for the knife at my ankle. One of my throwing knives.

Firelight turned it yellow and orange before my shadow coated it in black. I wanted to see it as it should be; silver and red. Just a trickle, nothing dangerous. Nothing frightening. Except it would be of course. It always had been to everyone who I tried to make understand. They couldn't take it, couldn't understand that it wasn't about hurting them. It was about taking care of them. Making them mine in a way that couldn't be washed away, couldn't be ignored or destroyed.

 _'You do that, we're going to have a problem John.'_

A small cut. Just a small one. No one would know but me and there would be no problem at all. It would be fine.

Fear fought with my desire. I didn't want to do it like this. This was not the dreamed of moment. Secretive, as if it were something shameful. It was a need that I had to meet. I had tried other ways and they were not enough. But I could not tell him. I couldn't ask him.

 _'Sane people don't want to cut up their lovers, Tony.'_

I'd asked Phil, and it had ended us. The next time I heard from him he'd gotten himself moved to a new agency and it was always 'Agent Coulson' from then on, not the man I'd known. Of course, I'd long since ceased being the man he had known as well.

I had weighed my options long ago. I couldn't ask, and I couldn't hold myself back entirely any longer.

I looked down the length of the couch to Harry's face. He had his eyes closed, his breathing coming slow and even. The pain killer I'd given him to take must have kicked in while I was in the bathroom. I'd cleaned the blade in there, wiped it down with the alcohol wipes I'd found in the small first aid kit beneath the sink.

I had no will power left. Harry had worn me down, destroyed every last argument and defense I had built over the years.

It would be a tiny cut. I would know that it was mine, and that would have to be enough.

Harry's skin was hot beneath my palm. I stretched my fingers wide, pulled the skin taut. The tip of the knife was brilliant against his skin, a blade of light. Bright and pure. I had to take a breath to steady myself. I wanted this so badly. Had wanted it for so long it was unbelievable that I was going to have it even though it was a petty, stolen version of what I really wanted.

I kept the blade razor sharp. It parted the thin skin between my fingers as though it were paper. The cut was small, no longer than the nail on my pinky. I shivered and sighed, tension ticking down out of my body a notch. The blood welled up as I pulled my blade away from Harry's body. There was a small stain at the tip of the knife.

“Ow!” Harry's hand was around my wrist, his fingers digging in. “What the hell- John?”

“I-” My eyes moved back and forth between the wound, _my_ wound and Harry's face. “You didn't take the pain killer.”

“No, I didn't. What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“Nothing.” I couldn't think straight, couldn't stop that rising edge of panic. It was stupid to lie at this point. It served no purpose. Still, I couldn't bring myself to say it. There had to be something I could say, some way to play this off and salvage what I had.

“That's weird, because it sure as hell looks like you just cut me, John.” The way he said my name was like a curse. “Are you going to do it again?”

“No. It's done.” For now. Forever, most likely. Harry's fingers relaxed enough to let circulation begin to return to my hand. I pulled my wrist from his grip and returned my knife to its sheath.

Harry sat up and I moved back, away from the couch. I ended with my back against one of the bookshelves. He touched the cut, examining it. There was a little bit of blood, but it was mostly dried by this point. A small cut. Hardly anything at all, really. But it was real, and it was mine. Even the nervous, churning fear couldn't take away from the simple pleasure that knowledge brought me. Whatever else happened, I had finally gotten to mark Harry the way I needed to.

“Why?”

I met Harry's eyes and searched his face for the fear. The disgust and the rejection. He was closed off, too used to hiding himself for me to be able to read him when he didn't want me to.

“It doesn't matter. It won't happen again.” Liar.

“I think it matters. You cut me. With a knife. When you thought I was unconscious. I think that's something we need to talk about.” I said nothing and Harry's closed gaze turned into a glare. “Talk, or get out. Take your pick.”

I nodded and held up my hand, asking for a moment. I would tell him, try to explain one more time.

~

“You're certain about this?”

“For the last time John, yes. Just what we agreed to though, right?” There was no tremor in Harry's voice, no shake to his hands where they lay against the skin of his stomach. I knew he was nervous all the same.

“Yes. Do you want me to go over it again?”

“No, no.” He shook his head and leaned back against the pillows. Not quite relaxed, but clearly ceding control of the situation for the moment.

“You remember-”

“If I say stop, you stop. This isn't a game, we don't need special words for 'no' here. Stop means stop.”

“Okay.”

I'd laid out everything we would need for Harry's inspection earlier. There were to be no surprises here, nothing that he did not see and check before hand. Looking at it now sent an alien feeling of contentment through me. Peace, if I had been a peaceful man.

The knife was an old one. My first butterfly knife, a gift from a woman who had understood me better than she had loved me. I had cleaned it earlier, almost compulsively.

I took one of the alcohol wipes and cleaned it again with Harry's eyes on me the entire while. A second wipe cleaned the small patch of skin at the apex of Harry's hip that we had agreed on. Harry's hand curled into a loose fist against his stomach as the cold cloth moved over his skin.

With my knife in hand, the flat of the blade hovering over the shining clean spot on his skin I turned to Harry one last time.

“Harry-”

“I swear, John, if you ask me if I'm sure one more time I am going to punch you in the face.”

My knife opened a small curving line in his skin. Harry gasped but didn't flinch, didn't shout or pull away. I moved as quickly as I could, my hands steady as I made the top of the 'J' and then the four quick straight lines for the 'M'. The letters were tiny when they were done. Deep enough to bleed, deep enough to scar. Not quite right. I couldn't justify the risk of putting my real initials there. But then, I hadn't been that man in so long he hardly seemed real any longer. So perhaps it was right that I marked Harry with the name I had chosen rather than the one that had been given to me.

Ease slid down my spine, made me feel light. For once, the world felt aligned. Right. It wouldn't last, but I would take what I could from it.

I cleaned the wounds carefully, finally drawing a hiss from Harry and a little bit of a squirm. Now was the moment for the bandage and I hesitated. I should finish treating the small wounds properly. I know I will be able to visualize the marks I've made perfectly and yet I don't want to cover them up in reality. Not yet.

“Leave it. It's fine.” Harry's hand touched the side of my face, drew my gaze up to him. I could still feel the pull of the mark; I would have to look at it again and again for a while until I convinced myself it was real.

I rolled my knife and the unused bandages and supplies up in the cloth they'd been laid out on and set it on the floor out of the way. I sealed up the trash bag and then I shifted on the bed until I could lay my head down against Harry's thighs. From this position I could see my marks or Harry's face with a small movement of my eyes or neck.

“Thank you.”


End file.
